The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) top vaccine official told a congressional committee on Friday that COVID-19 vaccines for kids under 6 will not have to meet the agency’s 50% efficacy threshold required to obtain Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).
The FDA is reviewing data from Moderna’s two-shot vaccine for infants and toddlers 6 months to 2 years old, and for children 2 to 6 years old.
The agency is awaiting data on Pfizer and BioNTech’s three-dose regimen for children under age 5 after two doses of its pediatric vaccine failed to trigger an immune response in 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds comparable to the response generated in teens and adults.
According to Endpoints News, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis the agency would not withhold authorization of a pediatric vaccine if it fails to meet the agency’s 50% efficacy threshold for blocking symptomatic infections.
COVID-19 vaccines for adolescents, teens and adults had to meet the requirement.
“If these vaccines seem to be mirroring efficacy in adults and just seem to be less effective against Omicron like they are for adults, we will probably still authorize,” Marks said.
The FDA on June 30, 2020, issued guidance that in order for an experimental COVID-19 vaccine to obtain EUA, it must “prevent disease or decrease its severity in at least 50 percent of people who are vaccinated.”
The guidelines were issued during a briefing with the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, during which senators sought assurances from former FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top health officials that the expedited speed of development of COVID-19 vaccines wouldn’t compromise the integrity of the final product.
All previously authorized COVID-19 vaccines and boosters for all age groups were required to meet the FDA’s 50% requirement prior to obtaining EUA.
Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco posted a video responding to the news the FDA would bypass its own standard to authorize pediatric COVID-19 vaccines for kids.
Prasad said:
“Peter Marks from the FDA — he’s the defacto regulator-in-chief when it comes to vaccines — is saying that kids’ vaccines don’t need to hit the target. They don’t need to hit the 50% vaccine efficacy against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 target. That was the target that the FDA themselves came up with in the original pandemic.
“They came up with this target 50% point estimate above, and the lower bound to the 95% confidence interval has to be above 30%. That was their minimum efficacy standard for vaccination. That was the standard they themselves set and that was the standard initial vaccine trials did clear for adults.
“But the pediatric vaccine trials — both the Pfizer and Moderna — appear not to have cleared that bar, and Peter Marks is talking to congressional officials and he is saying that it’s okay, we’ll probably authorize it anyway.”
Vasad said it was “incredible” that Marks would sign off on a pediatric vaccine if it seems to be mirroring efficacy in adults but is less effective against Omicron.
“We have standards for a reason,” Vasad said. The standard chosen by the FDA was “arbitrary and if anything I’d argue it was on the low side — 50% isn’t as good as what we wanted,” Vasad said.
“Fifty percent is quite low, and if you have a very low vaccine efficacy […] you can have compensatory behavior that actually leads to a lot more viral spread,” he added.
Vasad said when it comes to kids, it’s “kind of a moot point” because estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from a few months ago showed 75% of children had zero prevalence — and it’s “probably higher now.”
“Taking a child under the age of 5 who already had and recovered from COVID and trying to make them better off with a vaccine against the original Wuhan ancestral strain — that’s an uphill battle,” Vasad said.
“The absolute upper bound, absolute risk reduction, has got to be super super low because once kids have it and recover from it they generally do pretty well. If they get it again they do even better than the first time.”
Lowering the regulatory standards for vaccine products is not the direction FDA should go, Vasad said. “They need to be upholding the standards they’ve set and raising the standards.”
Vasad raised concerns over what the standard will be moving forward if the agency doesn’t abide by its own minimum requirement.
“At what point will vaccine efficacy arrive at something the agency doesn’t accept?” He asked.
Vasad said once the FDA does away with EUA, many preschools will immediately mandate COVID-19 vaccines, and they won’t make exceptions for natural immunity or provide any exceptions at all.
“And so what he’s talking about is authorizing a vaccine in a setting where you have 75% minimum zero prevalence and the vaccine efficacy could be less than 50%,” Vasad said. “How much less?”
Pointing to a Moderna press release stating one arm of its trial showed its pediatric vaccines were only 37% and 23% effective, Vasad asked, “How much lower can it go — 10%? How low before Peter Marks says that’s too low?”
Vasad said if the adult vaccine becomes less effective over time, “tell me why that means you should accept the less effective kids’ vaccine?”
Vasad explained:
“If a therapy loses efficacy over time, why does that mean the bar to be a therapy is lower? It should mean that we need new therapies. We need a new mRNA construct.
“You need to kind of aim at the thing that’s actually out there now and not the original thing from two years ago. Maybe you want to rejigger your process. Try something new but it doesn’t mean we keep lowering the bar. This is ridiculous.”
Moderna reports concerning efficacy data for pediatric COVID-19 vaccines
As The Defender reported, Moderna on April 28 asked the FDA to approve its COVID-19 mRNA-1273 vaccine for children 6 months to 6 years old, citing different efficacy numbers than it disclosed in March.
The company conducted separate trials for two versions of the vaccine, one for infants and toddlers aged 6 months to 2 years, and one for children 2 to 6 years, and claimed data showed “a robust neutralizing antibody response” and “a favorable safety profile.”
Yet, Moderna’s KidCOVE study showed the company’s COVID-19 vaccine failed to meet the FDA’s minimum efficacy requirements for EUA in the 2- to under-6 age group, and barely surpassed the agency’s 50% efficacy requirement in the 6-month to 2-year age group — even after the vaccine maker changed its analysis of the study to meet the threshold.
Moderna also did not follow trial participants beyond 28 days, so vaccine effectiveness after that time is unknown. Data from New York state show vaccine effectiveness for the 5-to-11 age group plummets within seven weeks to 12%.
“Here, we’re looking only at the first four weeks,” Dr. Madhava Setty told The Defender. “Although data from New York were in a different age group using a different mRNA vaccine, the effectiveness was remarkably similar after four weeks. Why wouldn’t we expect that the same thing is going to happen?”
The House Select Subcommittee on Coronavirus Crisis on April 26 asked the FDA for a status update on COVID-19 vaccines for children under 5.
The agency said it was considering holding off on reviewing Moderna’s request to authorize its COVID-19 vaccine for children under 5 until it has data from Pfizer and BioNTech on their vaccine for children, pushing the earliest possible authorization of a vaccine from May to June.
When asked on Friday whether the FDA’s vaccine advisors would slow-roll Moderna’s applications and wait to review Pfizer’s and Moderna’s applications together, Marks said the meetings set for next month could move up if necessary.
“Obviously if we get through reviews faster, then we will send them to committees sooner,” Marks said.
According to Rep. Jim Clyburn’s (D-S.C.) account of the meeting, Marks said the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee has reserved earlier dates, enabling the agency to potentially “move dates up even by a week for any of these reviews.”
“At the end of the day, we want people to have confidence in getting vaccinated,” Marks said. “We need to get more kids vaccinated, not just in the younger than 5 age range, but also older than 5.”
Megan Redshaw is a staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense and a reporter for The Defender.
Once upon a time United States foreign policy was based on actual national interests, but that was long ago and far away before the country was beguiled into a colonial war with Spain followed by a twentieth century that was chock-a-block full of any type and intensity of warfare that one might imagine, including the use of nuclear weapons. Some might consider that the United States has become a nation made by war, to include a presumption that all the war-making has been both just and necessary, since America is “exceptional” and by default “the leader of the Free World.” Witness what is taking place vis-à-vis Ukraine and Russia right now, pressing forward with a full-scale economic war against Moscow while arming one of the belligerents in support of no actual national interest, as if by habit. The propensity of American politicians to resort to arms to compensate for their other failures is such that among circles in Washington and the media there has long been a joke making the rounds observing that no matter who is nominated and elected president we always wind up with John McCain. But if one is seriously concerned about the tendency of the United States to view nearly every foreign problem as solvable if only one uses enough military force, the joke might be updated to suggest that we Americans now always wind up with the Kagans, the first family of neoconservative/neoliberal advocates for an aggressive, interventionist US foreign policy.
Victoria Nuland, the architect of the disaster in Ukraine and a Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton protege, is married to Robert Kagan and now serving as number three in the State Department. Robert is the Stephen & Barbara Friedman Senior Fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and is also a regular contributing columnist at The Washington Post. His brother is Fred, currently a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Fred’s wife Kimberley is head of the aptly named Institute for the Study of War.
When Congress-critters want to justify a new war, they frequently cite judgements made by one of the various groups associated with the Kagans. Robert is a frequent contributor to the national media both in interviews and opinion pieces calling inevitably for harsh measures against countries like Russia and Iran while Fred uses his bully pulpit to argue in favor of a large increases in military spending to counter “future threats.” Fred and Robert are members of the Aspen Strategy Group. They and their father, Donald, were all signatories to the neocon Project for the New American Century manifesto, Rebuilding America’s Defenses (2000).
Characteristically, the Kagan brothers love war but expect someone else to do the fighting. They are both considerably overweight and could never pass a military entrance physical if they were so inclined, which, of course they are not. The Kagans have been closely tied to the Democratic Party on many social issues and would likely describe themselves as liberal interventionists as well as neocons, since in practice both labels mean the same thing in terms of an assertive foreign policy backed by force. Plus, their flexibility gives them access to the foreign policy establishments of both major parties, as also does their support of Israeli interests in the Middle East, to include outspoken support of the Iraq War and for a covert war against Iran.
The Kagans are labeled by many as conservative, but they are not reliably Republican. Donald Trump was much troubled during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns by so-called conservatives who rallied behind the #NeverTrump banner, presumably in opposition to his stated intention to end or at least diminish America’s role in wars in the Middle East and Asia. The Kagans were foremost among those pundits. Robert was one of the first neocons to get on the #NeverTrump band wagon back in 2016 when he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and spoke at a Washington fundraiser for her, complaining about the “isolationist” tendency in the Republican Party exemplified by Trump. Many other notable neocons also declared themselves to be #NeverTrump, including Bill Kristol, Bret Stephens, Daniel Pipes, Reuel Gerecht, Max Boot and Jonah Goldberg.
To be sure, some high-profile neocons stuck with the Republicans, to include the highly controversial Elliott Abrams, who initially opposed Trump but later became the point man for dealing with both Venezuela and Iran, attracted by Trump’s hardline with both countries. Abrams’ conversion reportedly took place when he realized that the new president genuinely embraced unrelenting hostility towards Iran in particular as exemplified by his ending of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. John Bolton was also for a time a neocon in the White House fold, though he later became an enemy after being fired by the president and then wrote a book critical of Trump.
Even though the NeverTrumper neocons did not succeed in blocking Donald Trump in 2016, they maintained relevancy by slowly drifting back towards the Democratic Party, which is where they originated back in the 1970s in the office of the Senator from Boeing Henry “Scoop” Jackson. A number of them started their political careers there, to include leading neocon Richard Perle.
It would not be overstating the case to suggest that the neoconservative movement together with its liberal interventionist colleagues are dominating foreign policy thinking across the board in Congress and the White House. That development has been aided by a more aggressive shift among the Democrats themselves, with Russiagate and other “foreign interference” still to this day being blamed for the party’s failure in 2016 and for its dreary prospects in midterm elections later this year. Given that mutual intense hostility to Trump, the doors to previously shunned liberal media outlets have now opened wide to the stream of foreign policy “experts” who want to “restore a sense of the heroic” to US national security policy. Eliot A. Cohen and David Frum have been favored contributors to the Atlantic while Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss were together at the New York Times prior to Weiss’s resignation. Jennifer Rubin, who wrote in 2016 that “It is time for some moral straight talk: Trump is evil incarnate,” is a frequent columnist for The Washington Post while both she and William Kristol appear regularly on MSNBC. Russian-Jewish import hardliner Max Boot is a regular feature contributor at the Post.
The unifying principle that ties many of the mostly Jewish neocons together is, of course, unconditional defense of Israel and everything it does, which leads them to support a policy of American global military dominance which they presume will inter alia serve as a security umbrella for the Jewish state. In the post-9/11 world, the neocon media’s leading publication Bill Kristol’s The Weekly Standardvirtually invented the concept of “Islamofascism” to justify endless war in the Middle East, a development that has killed millions of Muslims, destroyed at least three nations, and cost the US taxpayer more than $5 trillion. The Israel connection has also resulted in neocon political and media support for the currently highly aggressive and dangerous policy against Russia, due in part to its involvement in defense of Israeli target Syria. In Eastern Europe, neocon ideologues have aggressively exploited the largely illusory policy of “democracy promotion,” which, not coincidentally, has also been a major Democratic Party foreign policy objective, both coming together nicely to justify the current chaos in Ukraine.
The neocons and liberal interventionists are involved in a number of foundations, the most prominent of which is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), that are largely funded by Jewish billionaires and defense contractors. FDD is headed by Canadian Mark Dubowitz and it is reported that the group takes direction coming from officials in the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Other major neocon incubators are the American Enterprise Institute, which currently is the home of Paul Wolfowitz, and the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at John Hopkins University.
Many former Barack Obama White House senior officials who believe in liberal interventionism and democracy promotion while also hating Russia and Vladimir Putin have developed comfortable working relationships with the neocons. Foreign policy hawks including Antony Blinken, Wendy Sherman, Nicholas Burns, Susan Rice and Samantha Power are calling most of the shots given Biden’s senility but with neocon political and media support.
Unfortunately, nowhere in Biden’s foreign policy circle does one find anyone who is resistant to the idea of worldwide interventionism in support of claimed humanitarian objectives, even if it would lead to an actual shooting war with major competitor power Russia and also possibly China. In fact, Biden himself embraces a characteristically extremely bellicose view on a proper relationship with foreign nations “claiming that he is defending democracy against its enemies.” His language and authoritarian governing style leave no wiggle room for constructive dialogue with adversaries. The script being written by his Administration on how to deal with the rest of the world promises nothing but unending trouble and quite possibly sharp economic decline in the US for the foreseeable future.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted fast track designation to UB-311, a vaccine for Alzheimer’s disease made by biotechnology company Vaxxinity.1 The shot is an anti-amyloid beta immunotherapeutic vaccine that reportedly treats Alzheimer’s disease by targeting aggregated amyloid beta in the brain.2
Aside from the potential problems that can arise when a vaccine is rushed to market, the vaccine may be problematic from the get-go because amyloid beta may be a symptom of Alzheimer’s — not the cause — and could even have a protective role in the disease process.3
Fast-tracking a vaccine that’s targeting an isolated element of Alzheimer’s disease that is not the underlying cause is destined to be a massive disaster.
Alzheimer’s Vaccine Being Fast-Tracked to Market
UB-311 is being touted for eliciting a “robust and durable anti-amyloid beta antibody responses in patients,” according to Vaxxinity.4 Phase 1, Phase 2a and Phase 2a long-term extension trials have already been completed, with the company stating that the vaccine was “well tolerated in mild-to-moderate AD patients over three years of repeat dosing, with a safety profile comparable to placebo and no cases of amyloid-related imaging abnormalities-edema (“ARIA-E”) in the main study.”5
ARIA-E, a marker of fluid retention and microhemorrhages in the brain, occurs in about one-third of people taking the Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab (brand name Aduhelm).6 Similar to UB-311, Aduhelm was brought to market under an accelerated approval pathway by the FDA, despite uncertainty about the clinical benefit.7 The action sparked protests within the FDA advisory panel, and three members subsequently resigned.8
As an amyloid beta-directed antibody drug, Aduhelm also works by targeting amyloid beta in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease, but the findings of ARIA-E in many taking the drugs are alarming. Adam Brickman with Columbia University, New York City, suggested that the drug could potentially make cognitive decline worse instead of better. “It’s hard to put a positive spin on the neuroimaging abnormalities,” he wrote. “… [W]e simply do not know the long-term consequences.”9
While Vaxxinity is touting no cases of ARIA-E among its subjects as a success, the same holds true about the vaccine in that no one knows the long-term consequences. Vaxxinity has planned a Phase 2b trial for late 2022.10 It’s worth noting that drug development for Alzheimer’s has so far been a dismal failure, with at least 300 failed trials to date.11
One study, which was a collaboration between Washington University in St. Louis, drug companies Eli Lilly and Roche, the National Institutes of Health and others, involved 194 participants, of which 52 took Roche’s drug gantenerumab and 52 took Eli Lilly’s solanezumab.12
The drugs were intended to remove amyloid beta (Aβ) from the brain, but they failed to achieve the primary outcome of the study, which was slowed cognitive decline, as measured by tests on thinking and memory.
In fact, while the drugs did target amyloid beta, they had no effect on cognitive measures, with the researchers writing, “Both drugs engaged their Aβ targets but neither demonstrated a beneficial effect on cognitive measures compared to controls.”13
Is Amyloid Beta the Problem?
Even if drugs reduce amyloid beta plaques in Alzheimer’s patients, how this translates to affecting cognitive decline remains to be seen. While Alzheimer’s is characterized by an accumulation of beta-amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain, there is controversy over their role in the development of the disease.
As researchers from the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science, department of dementia and higher brain function, wrote in Frontiers in Neuroscience :14
“The so-called amyloid hypothesis, that the accumulation and deposition of oligomeric or fibrillar amyloid β (Aβ) peptide is the primary cause of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), has been the mainstream concept underlying AD research for over 20 years. However, all attempts to develop Aβ-targeting drugs to treat AD have ended in failure.”
In 2009, researchers brought attention to the misguided premise of oversimplifying Alzheimer’s disease down to the amyloid-β protein precursor (AβPP) molecule, “implying that this molecule encapsulates AD so completely that the disease itself is almost of secondary importance.” This, they noted, ignores “the complexity of chronic diseases in general” and added:15
“A great deal of attention has focused on amyloid-β as the major pathogenic mechanisms with the ultimate goal of using amyloid-β lowering therapies as an avenue of treatment. Unfortunately, nearly a quarter century later, no tangible progress has been offered, whereas spectacular failure tends to be the most compelling.
We have long contended, as has substantial literature, that proteinaceous accumulations are simply downstream and, often, endstage manifestations of disease.
Their overall poor correlation with the level of dementia, and their presence in the cognitively intact is evidence that is often ignored as an inconvenient truth. Current research examining amyloid oligomers, therefore, will add copious details to what is, in essence, a reductionist distraction from upstream pleiotrophic processes such as oxidative stress, cell cycle dysfunction, and inflammation.
It is now long overdue that the neuroscientists avoid the pitfall of perseverating on ‘proteinopathies’ and recognize that the continued targeting of end stage lesions in the face of repeated failure, or worse, is a losing proposition.”
Amyloid Beta May Be Protective
There is even research to suggest that advanced protein aggregation, such as that seen in Alzheimer’s disease, could offer protective functions, perhaps protecting cells from toxic intermediates.16 Writing in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, researchers suggested that amyloid beta is a response to neuronal stress, one that functions as a protective adaptation to the disease.17
Amyloid beta, they argued, accumulates relatively late in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, and while it has been found to be toxic in cell culture models, this may not hold true in humans. Instead of the prevailing notion that a mutation leads to increased amyloid beta and that leads to Alzheimer’s, the team suggested that a mutation leads to Alzheimer’s, which in turn triggers increased amyloid beta:18
“Mutations lead to cellular stress, which, in turn, leads to increased amyloid-β … in AD, cellular stress precedes increases in amyloid-β … Proteins, such as amyloid-β, that are induced under oxidative conditions and act to lessen oxidative damage are typically thought of as antioxidants and, in this regard, we recently demonstrated that amyloid-β is a bona fide antioxidant that can act as a potent superoxide dismutase.”
This would explain, they suggest, why the brains of most elderly people contain amyloid-β, often in amounts similar to those found in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). They noted:19
“While such production and deposition of amyloid-β appears to successfully stave off age-related redox imbalances in normal aging, in AD, where there is a profound and chronic redox imbalance, the presence of amyloid-β, even at high levels, proves insufficient.”
The Link Between Alzheimer’s and Your Gut
If Alzheimer’s pathogenesis cannot be blamed entirely on amyloid beta, what, then, is the cause? It’s likely that many factors are to blame, with imbalances in gut microbiota among them. Research suggests, for example, that the bacteria in your intestines may influence brain functioning and can even promote neurodegeneration.20
In a study of 89 people, high blood levels of lipopolysaccharides (LPSs) and the short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) acetate and valerate were associated with large amyloid deposits in the brain.21 LPSs and SCFAs are markers of inflammation and proteins produced by intestinal bacteria.
High levels of butyrate — an SCFA produced when gut bacteria ferment fiber —were associated with less amyloid. The study represents a continuation of prior research by the team, which found that the gut microbiota in people with Alzheimer’s disease differs from those without the condition; in those with Alzheimer’s, microbial diversity is reduced, with certain bacteria being overrepresented and other microbes decreased.22
“Our results are indisputable: certain bacterial products of the intestinal microbiota are correlated with the quantity of amyloid plaques in the brain,” explains Moira Marizzoni, a study author with the Fatebenefratelli Center in Brescia, Italy.23
Still other research suggests gut microbiota may contribute to Alzheimer’s risk via multiple avenues, including by influencing aging, diabetes, sleep and circadian rhythm.24
It’s also possible, researchers hypothesize, that decades of factors such as diet, stress, aging and genetics, combine to disrupt gut permeability and the integrity of the blood-brain barrier, allowing the entry of inflammatory agents and pathogens and inducing an inflammatory response that triggers a neuroinflammatory response in the brain.25
There’s More to Alzheimer’s Than Amyloid Beta
UB-311 — the fast-tracked Alzheimer’s vaccine — is not going to touch the many complex factors leading to the development of Alzheimer’s disease and is likely to have unintended adverse consequences. Dietary factors, for instance, are being completely overlooked by focusing on a vaccine to target amyloid beta.
Not only does what you eat affect your gut health but it also impacts cholesterol, and cholesterol also plays an important role in the formation of memories and is vital for healthy neurological function. As noted by senior research scientist Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., insufficient fat and cholesterol in your brain play a crucial role in the Alzheimer’s disease process, detailed in her 2009 paper “APOE-4: The Clue to Why Low Fat Diet and Statins May Cause Alzheimer’s.”26
Time-restricted eating is another important strategy, as is reducing your intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids, also called PUFAs, found in vegetable oils, edible oils, seed oils, trans fat and plant oils. For a more targeted approach, natural options are available.
Animal and laboratory studies demonstrate that the spice saffron is neuroprotective, for instance. Data also show it is as effective as the drug memantine to treat moderate to severe Alzheimer’s disease.27 One of the most comprehensive assessments of Alzheimer’s risk is Dr. Dale Bredesen’s ReCODE protocol, which evaluates 150 factors, including biochemistry, genetics and historical imaging, known to contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.
In his book, “The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline,”28 which describes the complete protocol, you will also find a list of suggested screening tests and the recommended ranges for each test, along with some of Bredesen’s treatment suggestions.
Overall, nourishing your brain health is best done with a comprehensively healthy lifestyle. By leveraging 36 healthy lifestyle parameters, Bredesen was able to reverse Alzheimer’s in 9 out of 10 patients.
This included the use of exercise, ketogenic diet, optimized vitamin D and other hormones, increased sleep, meditation, detoxification and the elimination of gluten and processed food. For more details, you can download Bredesen’s full-text case paper online, which details the full program.29
Germany and Qatar have failed to reach an agreement regarding long-term liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply contracts, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing people close to the talks.
According to the outlet, Berlin will not agree to Qatar’s demand to sign deals for a duration of at least 20 years. Despite seeking to end its reliance on Russian natural gas amid the situation in Ukraine, Berlin reportedly views this timeframe as contradicting its plan to slash carbon emissions by 88% by 2040.
“The issue of LNG contract length potentially putting Germany’s decarbonization targets at risk is part of the ongoing discussions with Qatar,” one of the sources told Reuters, noting that Germany is not the only nation eager to secure LNG supplies from Qatar.
Qatar also wants to contractually prevent Germany from rerouting the LNG deliveries to other European states, and this measure is not welcome by the EU, the sources said.
One of the sources told the publication that the LNG deal between Qatar and Germany “is not expected to happen soon.”
Qatar is the world’s largest LNG supplier. Major German power producer RWE already has a deal with Qatargas dating back to 2016 for 1.1 million tons of LNG annually until the end of 2023. RWE officials, as well as representatives from another German utility, Uniper, and German Economy Minister Robert Habeck visited Qatar in March to secure additional volumes of LNG supplies, but have not agreed on a long-term deal so far.
The delegation is set to return to Qatar later this month to resume negotiations, according to Reuters sources. They claim that Germany aims to reach a two-way partnership with Qatar, exchanging additional LNG supply contracts for assistance from German firms in the Qatari move toward sustainability.
“There needs to be a gentlemen’s agreement between the Qataris and German companies, that LNG should only be the first step in a longer collaboration between the two countries,” an unnamed German industry source said.
The European Union is, as usual, taking the wrong approach when it comes to dealing with Israel’s violations of international law. With over 1,200 Palestinians facing forced eviction from Masafer Yatta, also known as “Firing Zone 918”, after the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in favour of demolishing eight villages, the EU merely summarised what Israel and the international community already know: Israel has obligations under international law.
“Under international law, individual or mass forcible transfers and deportation of protected persons from the occupied territories are prohibited, regardless of their motive,” the EU’s delegation to the Palestinians tweeted. “As the occupying power, Israel has the obligation to protect the Palestinian population and not displace it.” As the occupying power, Israel knows this, but ignores it nonetheless.
Indeed, Israel has no need for a reminder of its obligations; it needs, and we need, the international community to hold it to account for those obligations. The international community, though, is invested heavily in Israel, both politically and economically.
Once again, Israel has used its fake security narrative to usurp the land on which Masafer Yatta is built. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) claim that the land is needed for military training purposes. According to the Jerusalem Post, Palestinians living in the villages slated for demolition can still reach an agreement with the IDF to access some of the land for agricultural purposes. There are, however, many examples where Palestinians have been deprived of their agricultural land permanently, but have had to face Israeli settler and military violence forcing them to stay away from their land even when such “access” has been agreed in advance.
Documents dating back to 1981 reveal that Ariel Sharon offered Masafer Yatta to the IDF in order to forcibly displace Palestinians so that Israel can retain the territory for its expansion. “We definitely have an interest in enlarging our territory there… given the spread of the rural Arabs on the ‘back of the mountain’ towards the desert.”
Masafer Yatta’s Mayor, Nidal Abu Younis, said that, “This [ruling] proves that this court is part of the occupation.” It is a pity that such statements are made as if he or anyone else has just realised the nature of Israel’s Supreme Court. There was no need for this or any other ruling to prove the court’s loyalty to the settler-colonial state. No state or judicial institution in Israel will work against the colonial process. And neither will the EU, which has financed dwellings for the communities living in Masafer Yatta. In January this year, Israel destroyed eight structures in the area, leaving 19 people, along them 11 children, forcibly displaced.
The humanitarian agenda employed by the EU only serves the bloc’s interests. EU investment in Palestine is minimal and corrupted, as is its statement reminding Israel of its obligations under international law. Israel has violated international law to guarantee its existence and it is given diplomatic support for doing so, which takes precedence over any humanitarian aid allocated to Palestinians by the same political actors supporting Israel. When will the EU issue a statement that expresses its contempt for the forced transfer of Palestinians, for example, and link it to this historical disregard which the international community has for ongoing forced displacement that has happened ever since and including the Nakba?
Israel has just celebrated what it calls Independence Day, which is based on the myth of national liberation from British colonialism and the establishment of an independent state dreamt about by successive generations of Jews. On this day every year, Israel flexes its military muscles and holds celebrations across the country.
The Israelis celebrate their theft and occupation of Palestine, a land with deep Arab roots. Israel’s “independence” replaced British colonialism with an even more horrific settler-colonialism. Not for nothing do the Palestinians call the establishment of the colonial state of Israel the Nakba — the Catastrophe — because what happened in 1948 was not liberation from colonialism or independence, but the greatest armed robbery of the twentieth century. An entire country was seized through the Zionists’ ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population. What’s more, the Nakba didn’t begin and end in 1948; it is ongoing.
As such, Israeli “independence” celebrations do not commemorate the past; they encourage what is still happening in Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Negev, the Galilee and the rest of occupied Palestine. The Palestinians in Israel remember the Nakba and the ethnic cleansing under the slogan “Your Independence Day is our Nakba Day” to emphasise the fact that their land has been stolen and occupied by force, deception and the falsification of history. That is why it was shameful for the UAE to send Israel a congratulatory telegram on this day.
Arguably even more shameful is the fact that the Nakba was blessed by the international community when recognition of Israel was granted with a seat in the UN General Assembly, even though it has never fulfilled the condition of its membership, the return of Palestinian refugees. The occupation state has been protected ever since by the “permanent members” of the UN Security Council, which was established specifically to achieve the goals of the nuclear powers post-Second World War. The colonial countries rushed to recognise the settler-colonial entity planted on Arab land; first up was the Soviet Union, followed by the US (not the other way round, as is often believed). East and West worked together to stab the Arab people in the back, although if it wasn’t for the plotting of Arab states, the West wouldn’t have been able to carry out its conspiracy in Arab Palestine.
The planning for the Zionist entity began in the late nineteenth century. Serious lobbying of colonial states led to the issue of the disastrous 1917 Balfour Declaration in which the British government promised its support for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. It was a promise made by those who did not own the land to those who had no legitimate claim to it. The promise was fulfilled on 14 May 1948, since when Palestinians have lived in exile and under occupation, with all of the suffering that that implies. The Palestinians’ struggle against the occupation of their land has carried on for 74 years, despite the plotting of the Arab rulers against them. The world has not served them justice or restored their usurped rights or land; the international community, headed by the US, supports Israel, and the Arab countries loyal to the US act as guardians for Israel’s as yet undeclared borders. It is an expansionist colonial project.
All Arab rulers, without exception, have traded with the Palestinian issue in front of their people who love Palestine, from the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser until today, in order to consolidate their own grip on power. What has been going on behind the scenes is, though, completely different, and only came to light after years of deception in the peace treaties signed with the Israeli enemy. The PLO signed the Oslo Accords with Israel on 13 September, 1993, in which the “liberation” organisation recognised Israel and removed from its national charter the clause about the armed struggle to liberate Palestine from the sea to the river in return for imaginary “authority” that was created to do nothing more than provide security for the occupation state and be the forerunner of an independent state that was never really intended to come into being.
The theft of Palestinian land has been ongoing throughout the years of the so-called “peace process”, with ever more and ever larger illegal Israeli settlements and infrastructure making it impossible for there to be enough contiguous territory for such a state to exist. There remains less than 20 per cent of historic Palestine left for the Palestinians, and all of it is dominated by Israel’s military occupation.
The ill-fated Oslo Accords have led to more killing and arrests — by Israeli and Palestinian Authority security forces — of Palestinians struggling for their freedom. The Aqsa Intifada in September 2000 restored the spirit of resistance to the Palestinian people under the late leader Yasser Arafat. He came back from the US frustrated after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David, under the auspices of US President Bill Clinton; he was convinced by that stage that there was no point in peace agreements with Israel. The establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and the return of Palestinian refugees to their land was an illusion.
Arafat himself led the intifada. The uprising included the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, which had not abandoned the Palestinian constants and the restoration of all of Palestine, from the sea to the river. There was no way for this to be achieved except through legitimate resistance.
Thus began a new phase of the Palestinian struggle which has continued since Arafat was besieged in his Ramallah compound and then killed in 2004 as a “punishment” for the intifada. Israel’s unilateral 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip under the weight of Hamas resistance, which was steadfast despite the assassination of its founder and spiritual guide, the quadriplegic Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, its leader Dr Abdel Aziz Rantisi and others. Four major military offensives have since been launched against the Palestinians in Gaza accompanied by a comprehensive land, sea and air blockade after Hamas won the 2006 parliamentary election. Through all of this, legitimate resistance has been neither weakened nor undermined; the resolve of the Palestinian people to make huge sacrifices to liberate their land remains strong. They do so with dignity and honour.
The Israeli enemy has failed to bring the Palestinian people to their knees in Gaza, just as it has failed to defeat Hamas. That is why the head of the “sacred” security coordination authority in Ramallah, Mahmoud Abbas, is tasked with trying to discredit the Islamic movement and bring it down. He joins in the accusations of “terrorism” used to describe legitimate resistance to Israel’s military occupation. He also cut the salaries of PA employees in the Gaza Strip to turn the people against Hamas, but his plan failed.
There is no doubt that there is optimism within the great Palestinian nation, which is inspirational. The people have been able to turn the tables on the occupation state on many occasions, with their innovation and creativity in the struggle. The Israelis live in fear, while the Palestinians believe that they will either win or die in the process. Such a people are unbeatable.
The current generation includes the great-grandchildren of the Palestinians who were expelled from their land in the first wave of ethnic cleansing during the Nakba. Most have not been to their grandparents’ homes and land in what is now the usurper state of Israel, but they still live in Palestine in their hearts and minds. They are living proof that the Zionist claim that, “The old will die and the young will forget” is a lie. The old did die, but only after handing over the keys to the young, passing on the mission so that they will never forget. The Palestinian people will not be defeated in their struggle to live with honour, freedom and dignity.
Climate activists’ ill-founded opposition to fossil fuels threatens to stop a major pipeline project in East Africa and stymie economic growth in Uganda and Tanzania — home to some of the world’s poorest people.
Uganda is betting big on its fossil fuel reserves. In February, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and France’s TotalEnergies agreed to invest $10 billion to develop two Ugandan oil reserves. But the landlocked country needs the East African Crude Oil Pipeline project (EACOP) to transport its product to a port in Tanzania.
The 895-mile-long pipeline from Uganda’s Lake Alberta region to the seaport of Tanga will be the longest electrically heated crude oil pipeline in the world and will carry 216,000 barrels per day. The project received a green light for construction after the completion of an Environment and Social Impact Assessment.
The Africa Reportsays that the investment will be huge: “(A)bout $10 billion will be invested in the sector (oil and gas) before first oil is produced in 2025, mainly on the pipeline, refinery, and infrastructure. The government has been commissioning road construction in the region where oil will be produced, in Buliisa and Hoima districts, and an airport is also being constructed in the region.” The project is expected to generate around 10,000 jobs even after the construction phase.
The Government of Uganda expects massive employment of its citizens during construction: “This will be through direct employment of about 14,000 people by the companies, indirect employment of about 45,000 people by the contractors, and induced employment of about 105,000 people as a result of utilization of other services by the oil and gas sector. Of the direct employment, 57 percent are expected to be Ugandans, which is expected to result in an estimated $48.5 million annual payment to Ugandan employees.”
However, the global war against fossil fuel has now reached Ugandan soil and extremists are determined to stop this lifesaving, economically critical project.
Vanessa Nakate of StopEACOP rants against the pipeline in a recent column in the New York Times, saying the project would bring poverty and destruction to the people of Africa. She also references extreme weather in implying the pipeline will worsen the climate.
During a visit to the ultra-rich Vatican, Vanessa says: “It is evident that there is no future in the fossil fuel industry…. we know the impacts on our food. We know the impacts on our water. We know the impacts on our livelihood…… the climate crisis is already affecting so many people not only in Uganda, but the African continent.”
But her reasons for opposing the pipeline are scientifically inaccurate and logically senseless.
She points to a forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that predicts African droughts. But IPCC, by its own admission, has indicated that extreme weather events have no significant correlation with rising global average temperatures. Neither has there been any significant increase in the frequency of extreme cyclones, droughts, rainfall, and fires. Even if droughts and cyclones were to increase, a better socio-economic condition would enable people to adapt more effectively.
Contrary to Vanessa’s hyperbole, the world is experiencing near optimum temperatures for global food production and the advancement of human society, much as it did 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period and 2,000 years ago during the Roman Warm Period. Globally, we now have better access to clean water, better access to nutritious food, people with higher income, and a very rapid increase in life expectancy rates. How are we in a crisis if climate is aiding the improvement of every metric used to measure the quality of people’s lives?
It is shocking how Vanessa ignores the plight of millions of her own people dwelling in persistent poverty and in need of affordable, dependable energy sources like coal, oil, and gas. It is less shocking if we understand the DNA of climate extremists, which has them deny the reality of energy needs and promote unreliable, primitive, and expensive wind turbines that even economic giants like Germany and the U.S. hesitate to adopt completely.
Climate extremists like Vanessa are fostering the continuation of abject poverty in Africa — a continent with the lowest level of electrification and highest rates of poverty in the world. Vanessa claims that the pipeline is another colonial project subjecting Africans to slavery. But, it is Vanessa and her ilk who are the colonialists and would-be slave masters.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a Master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.
“World will ‘run out of food’ in 27 years, according to chilling doomsday prediction,” reads the headline in the Daily Star (UK). The article’s subtitle:
EXCLUSIVE: Scientists have issued a terrifying warning and have said the world could be left starving without any food in just over two decades, according to a chilling doomsday countdown
If the world doesn’t run out of food next year, as Sara Menker with Gro Intelligencewarned back in 2017, scientists predict that we’ll run out in “exactly 27 years and 251 days left as of Sunday.”
In 2050? The author of the Daily Star article, Sian Hewitt, quotes sociobiologist Edward Wilson:
By then, there will be almost 10 billion people on the planet and the food demand will have increased by 70% compared to what we needed in 2017. The limit to how many people Earth can feed is set at 10 billion at the absolute maximum. The constraints of the biosphere are fixed, there’s no wiggle room here.
The amazing specificity of Wilson’s prediction is testimony to the advances that science and scientific predictions have made in just the last few years…. And, as if further evidence were necessary, Wilson is not alone:
Professor Julian Cribb, who has written books on the catastrophic prophecy, said: “This is a global food crisis and I don’t think I can see a way out of it.
It is arriving even faster than climate change.
Shortages of water, land, and energy combined with the increased demand from population and economic growth, will create a global food shortage around 2050.
World wars could become about food and water in years to come.
To meet the increasing demand from a growing population, we will need to produce more food in the next 40 years than has been produced in the previous 8,000 years.
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.
Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions…. By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.
The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.
So, there you have it. The science is settled. We have nothing to fear from climate change.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday put strict limits on the use of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID-19 vaccine, citing the risk of a blood-clotting condition the agency described as “rare and potentially life-threatening.”
In a statement Thursday, the FDA said the risk of vaccine recipients developing thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) after receiving the vaccine “warrants limiting the authorized use of the vaccine.”
The FDA said it has identified 60 cases of vaccine-induced thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, including nine deaths, out of about 18 million doses administered — although the condition is likely underreported.
Women 30 to 49 years old are at the highest risk of TTS from the J&J vaccine, with about eight cases per 1 million doses of vaccine administered, according to the FDA.
According to the latest data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), between Dec. 14, 2020, and April 29, 2022, there were 13,873 reports of blood-clotting disorders following COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S.
In the U.S., 575 million COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered as of April 29, including 339 million doses of Pfizer, 217 million doses of Moderna and 19 million doses of J&J.
The agency said the “known and potential benefits” of the J&J vaccine for preventing COVID-19 outweigh the known and potential risks for individuals 18 and older “for whom other authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccines are not accessible or clinically appropriate,” or “who elect to receive the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine because they would otherwise not receive a COVID-19 vaccine.”
The agency described TTS as “a syndrome of rare and potentially life-threatening blood clots in combination with low levels of blood platelets with onset of symptoms approximately one to two weeks following administration of the Janssen [J&J] COVID-19 vaccine.”
The updated restrictions to the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the vaccine, marketed under the Janssen brand, also apply to booster doses, CNN reported.
People who can still get the Janssen vaccine include:
Those who had a severe allergic reaction to the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna mRNA vaccine.
Those with personal concerns about the mRNA vaccines who would remain unvaccinated unless they can choose the Janssen vaccine.
Those with limited access to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
Symptoms of TTS include shortness of breath, chest pain, leg swelling, persistent abdominal pain, neurological symptoms (like headaches or blurred vision) or red spots just under the skin called “petechiae” found beyond the site of injection.
Experts question timing, and why just J&J?
Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said limiting the authorized use of the Janssen vaccine “demonstrates the robustness of our safety surveillance systems and our commitment to ensuring that science and data guide our decisions.”
Marks said:
“We’ve been closely monitoring the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine and occurrence of TTS following its administration and have used updated information from our safety surveillance systems to revise the EUA.
“The agency will continue to monitor the safety of the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine and all other vaccines, and as has been the case throughout the pandemic, will thoroughly evaluate new safety information.”
However, Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., Children’s Health Defense chief scientific officer and professor of biology at Simpson University, had a different take on the news.
“It seems like the FDA pays lip service to the fact that the spike protein can cause clotting, and to the widespread reports of clotting, by punishing Janssen, who has become the ‘whipping boy’ of the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers through the pandemic,” Hooker said.
“I believe this is partially because of the limited use of the Janssen vaccine in the U.S. as compared to Pfizer and Moderna,” he added.
Hooker said the FDA can limit the use of the J&J vaccine without significantly impacting vaccine distribution overall, “while having the appearance of addressing the myriad vaccine adverse events caused by all the types of COVID-19 vaccines.”
As of Thursday, CNN reported only 7.7% of those considered fully vaccinated received the J&J vaccine.
Dr. Pierre Kory, founder and president of Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, told The Defender :
“My only hypothesis is this action is some attempt for the FDA to be able to claim that they took at least some action to protect the safety of the public, akin to ‘virtue signaling.’
“Having been a keen observer of their actions throughout the pandemic, I find this action to be completely insufficient and demonstrates a calculated attempt to ensure vaccinations with similarly dangerous vaccines continue.”
Dr. Meryl Nass questioned the timing of the FDA’s restriction of the EUA.
“Why did the FDA just throw the kill switch on the Janssen vaccine, when it knew of the thrombosis problems since the rollout?” Nass asked.
Nass told The Defender the FDA may have known about the thrombosis problem even before the Janssen vaccine rollout, “since the adenovirus vector platform is known to be associated with thrombosis” for “more than 15 years.”
Kory, who noted that all COVID-19 vaccines have had a high rate of adverse events, also questioned the timing of the new restrictions.
“I find the timing of this action to be both irrational and alarming given there is extensive data from around the world, much of it being censored from media and medical journals, that all the COVID-19 vaccines, not just Janssen, have long had unacceptable and diverse toxicity signals — beyond just clotting disorders from numerous pharmacovigilance databases and epidemiological and public health data reports,” Kory said.
As far back as April 2021, U.S. and European health officials were investigating whether the J&J COVID-19 vaccines were causing blood clots.
However, there was already mounting evidence the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines could cause similar adverse reactions. U.S. regulatory officials were alerted to this risk as far back as December 2020.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in December 2021 recommended the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID vaccines over the J&J vaccine due to the risk of blood clots, despite data showing the Pfizer and Moderna shots also cause blood-clotting disorders.
In January 2021, shortly after the rollout of Pfizer’s vaccine in the U.S., The Defender reported on the death of a 56-year-old Florida doctor who developed a blood-clotting disorder after the Pfizer vaccine and died 12 days later.
The Defender also reported on numerous other deaths related to blood-clotting disorders that developed after the Moderna and J&J vaccines.
On April 13, 2021, the FDA and CDC paused use of the vaccine to investigate six reported cases of TTS.
The agencies lifted the pause only 10 days later, after confirming a total of 15 cases of TTS had been reported to VAERS, including the original six reported cases, out of approximately 8 million doses administered.
This story is about the proposed new World Health Organization pandemic treaty that can potentially eradicate the national sovereignty as we know it. It is also about the banality of evil and the impact of our individual daily choices on the future generations and the history of the world.
What’s the Deal With the World Health Organization Pandemic Treaty?
In December 2021, the World Health Organization announced their plan to develop a new pandemic treaty “strengthening” international cooperation during future pandemics. What does it mean in practical terms? The language of the announcement was vague, so we need to interpret it in context. Here’s from the horse’s mouth: (December 2021):
“In a consensus decision aimed at protecting the world from future infectious diseases crises, the World Health Assembly today agreed to kickstart a global process to draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument under the Constitution of the World Health Organization to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, said the decision by the World Health Assembly was historic in nature, vital in its mission, and represented a once-in-a-generation opportunity to strengthen the global health architecture to protect and promote the well-being of all people.”
“In a consensus decision aimed at protecting the world from future infectious diseases crises, in December 2021 the World Health Assembly agreed to kickstart a global process by establishing an intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) to draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument under the Constitution of the World Health Organization to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response …
As part of this historic decision, the World Health Assembly requested the Director-General to hold public hearings, in line with standard WHO practice, to support the work of the INB. Per the INB’s timeline, the first round of those hearings has been set for 12-13 April 2022, with a second round set for 16-17 June. This information on the modalities for the first round of hearings is also expected to apply to the second round as well.”
Lies, Lies, Lies
Let’s start with the issue of distorted language. In an honest world with no dark agendas, no Fourth Industrial Revolution, and no upside-down language, their treaty could sound like a beautiful idea. Like, what can possibly be wrong with benevolently guided, meaningful international cooperation during a time of crisis? A beautiful fairy tale, no?
Sadly, not a fairy tale at all but more like a horror movie because we are living in a world of shameless lying and upside-down language — and the words no longer mean what they are supposed to mean.
To deceive us, the bureaucrats are trying to create a feeling in our minds that they getting together to protect us, like a benevolent council of wise indigenous grandmothers — while in reality, it’s more like they are aiming to trap us, being a gang of greedy and ruthless wolves in sheep’s clothes that they are.
“Health” doesn’t mean actual health but rather the promotion of any product or interference that is desirable to the shareholders and the CEOs of pharmaceutical and technology companies.
Just like Fauci recently equated himself with science, the corporate mouthpieces equate whatever they want to sell or impose on us with “health,” and then say they are protecting our “health” while in fact, they are merely protecting their pockets.
We are living in a world where our leaders (translation: our fellow human being who have no intrinsic upper hand on us but who have gotten ahead on the basis of being extremely power-hungry) are taking full advantage of the fact that in order to do destructive things with the least resistance, then can call them “useful things that are good for the people,” and get away with it for some time. That’s the trick!
And besides, if the past two years are any indication, “international cooperation” means in practice that all WEF-affiliated leaders go ahead and throw their people under the bus in unison, to the sound of uniform messaging in the media.
“International cooperation” means that all countries do the same destructive thing, resulting in unnecessary human death and suffering, a disruption of social structures and the world economy, all to clear the way for their favorite “new normal.” That’s some international cooperation!
Public Hearings
Given the self-proclaimed historical nature of this treaty, the World Health Organization dedicated the whole two days to the first round of the public hearings (and they didn’t advertise it much). The first round took place in April 2022. The second round will be held in June of this year.
Dr. Tess Lawrie wrote a very moving article about the WHO pandemic treaty and the video comment submission by the World Council for Health.
Here are Dr. Lawrie’s comments on the proposed treaty, after she had a chance to participate in a call with the WHO (as well as UNAIDS, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, the UN Environment Programme, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) as a part of the submission process.
• Calls for ‘human security centric’ not just ‘health security centric’. Apparently, they don’t just want to control your body but every aspect of your life.
• Fast approval of emergency diagnostics – and unified regulatory registration for diagnostics. In other words, more control.
• Equitable access to vaccines and ‘a mechanism to hold violators accountable’. So if a nation concludes a vaccine is not safe – as has happened in this last pandemic – the WHO would have the power to override that and jab their population anyway.
• Vaccines should be developed within 100 days. This is absurd. Safe drugs take ten years to be adequately tested and declared safe. There are more than 3.5 million people on the WHO database who have been harmed by Covid vaccines and this may be the tip of the iceberg.
I agree that these bullet points sound like it’s about control, so no surprise that it comes with more censorship!
More Censorship
While the public comments were open, the #StopTheTreaty campaign by the World Council for Health, where Dr. Tess Lawrie is on the Steering Committee, was the talk of the town in the “freedom community.” But if you searched for it on Google, you wouldn’t know anything about it! Here’s what I wrote just a few hours after the comment period ended:
“If you search for the phrase “WHO pandemic treaty” on DuckDuckGo, #StopTheTreaty comes up among the top results. On Google though no such thing exists. If you actually search for the phrase “stop the treaty,” on DuckDuckGo #StoopTheTreaty is the number one result. Google, on the other hand, tells you everything you ever wanted to know about the 1919 Treaty of Versailles!)”
For the World Health Organization, It’s Not the First Rodeo
It is curious that it’s not the first time that the WHO is trying serve the pharmaceutical industry and various industry shareholders using “pandemic preparedness” as a legal tool.
For example, in 2009, they announced an influenza pandemic (H1N1) that activated vaccine purchasing agreements and forced participating countries to large batches of doses that they didn’t need. The rushed release of a subpar medical product led to a “narcolepsy fiasco,” among other things.
According to the report by the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly:
“The Parliamentary Assembly is alarmed about the way in which the H1N1 influenza pandemic has been handled, not only by the World Health Organization (WHO), but also by the competent health authorities at the level of the European Union and at national level.
It is particularly troubled by some of the consequences of decisions taken and advice given leading to distortion of priorities of public health services across Europe, waste of large sums of public money, and also unjustified scares and fears about health risks faced by the European public at large.
The Assembly notes that grave shortcomings have been identified regarding the transparency of decision-making processes relating to the pandemic which have generated concerns about the possible influence of the pharmaceutical industry on some of the major decisions relating to the pandemic.
The Assembly fears that this lack of transparency and accountability will result in a plummet in confidence in the advice given by major public health institutions. This may prove disastrous in the case of the next disease of pandemic scope – which may turn out to be much more severe than the H1N1 pandemic …
The rapporteur considers that some of the outcomes of the pandemic, as illustrated in this report, have been dramatic: distortion of priorities of public health services all over Europe, waste of huge sums of public money, provocation of unjustified fear amongst Europeans, creation of health risks through vaccines and medications which might not have been sufficiently tested before being authorised in fast-track procedures, are all examples of these outcomes.”
Even Forbeswrote in 2010 that “from the beginning the World Health Organization’s actions have ranged from the dubious to the flagrantly incompetent.” A poignant quote:
“The WHO’s dubious decisions demonstrate that its officials are too rigid or too incompetent (or both) to make needed adjustments in the pandemic warning system — deficiencies we have come to expect from an organization that is scientifically challenged, self-important and unaccountable.
The WHO may be able to perform and report worldwide surveillance — i.e., count numbers of cases and fatalities — but its policy role should be drastically limited.
U.N. bureaucrats pose as authorities on all manner of products, public policy and human activities, from desertification and biodiversity to the regulation of chemicals, uses of the ocean and the testing of genetically engineered plants.
However, the U.N.’s regulatory policies, requirements and standards often defy scientific consensus and common sense. Its officials are no friends of commerce, public health or environmental protection. The result is a more precarious, more dangerous and less resilient world. When it comes to pestilence, the U.N. may be the greatest plague of all.”
What’s a Pandemic, Anyway?
It’s noteworthy that just before the WHO declared a pandemic, they changed the definition of the word. From the British Medical Journal:
“WHO for years had defined pandemics as outbreaks causing “enormous numbers of deaths and illness” but in early May 2009 it removed this phrase — describing a measure of severity — from the definition.
Key scientists advising the World Health Organization on planning for an influenza pandemic had done paid work for pharmaceutical firms that stood to gain from the guidance they were preparing. These conflicts of interest have never been publicly disclosed by WHO, and WHO has dismissed inquiries into its handling of the A/H1N1 pandemic as ‘conspiracy theories.’
A joint investigation by the BMJ and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has uncovered evidence that raises troubling questions about how WHO managed conflicts of interest among the scientists who advised its pandemic planning, and about the transparency of the science underlying its advice to governments.
Was it appropriate for WHO to take advice from experts who had declarable financial and research ties with pharmaceutical companies producing antivirals and influenza vaccines?”
Boasting About the Tricks
In 2019, Marc Van Ranst, Belgian Flu Commissioner, gave a talk at the ESWI/Chatham House Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Stakeholders Conference. At around 13 minutes in, he boasted about how he “misused the fact that that the top, top football … soccer clubs in Belgium inappropriately and against all agreements vaccinated … they made their soccer players priority people.” The audience responded with laughter.
In order to understand the corruption inside the WHO, one may want to watch a pre-pandemic documentary called “Trust WHO,” produced by Lilian Franck. Among other things, it looks into various conflicts of interest as well as the examples of how the organization has been influenced by the tobacco industry and the nuclear industry.
The United Nations Has Been Hijacked
Last year, I interviewed Mary Otto-Chang, a former United Nations employee, who talked about the hijacking of the UN and the 2019 agreement between the UN and the World Economic Forum that the Fourth Industrial Revolution as a cooperation goal.
So what we are looking at is using the authority of the UN as supposedly a just and wonderful international organization that protects the people for the commercial and philosophical goals of the richest people of the world. What an intricate lie!
Banality of Evil
Most horrible things that people do to each other don’t come out of nowhere. There is usually a “warm-up” period during which evil actions are trivialized, and people’s senses are “re-trained.”
Sometimes, using upside-down language, people’s senses are re-trained to the extent of swapping out the meanings completely, where war becomes peace, and murder becomes compassion. It takes time to dehumanize entire demographics — based on a particular ethnicity, or religion, or health status, or any other arbitrary affiliation.
For example, in early Nazi Germany, there was a campaign to kill mentally disabled children, (and also do inhumane experiments on them), and the parents were often told that their children were being taken away for better care. The parents didn’t know that their children were being murdered — but the nurses who killed the disabled knew exactly what they were doing, but perhaps some of them believed that they were performing acts of mercy!
There is a powerful, must-see documentary about it, called, “The Killing Nurses of the Third Reich.” I wrote about it last year:
“The only thing that was needed for the nurses to make the transition to the horror zone was to decide that the poor suffering imbeciles had no agency. As soon as in their minds, the nurses stripped the disabled children and the mentally ill adults of their human agency and turned them into creatures akin to suffering pets, killing them became virtuous. The nurses held the disabled babies lovingly, and then killed them.”
Our Choices Matter
Something that I have been thinking about a lot over the course of my life is how our choices have long-term consequences: for ourselves, for the people around us, and even for the history of the world!
For example, to come back to the topic of pandemic preparedness, much of what happened in the U.S. in 2020 was made possible thanks to Bush’s 2005 decision to redo the pandemic preparedness plan. Who paid any attention to it back in 2005? Who could imagine that it would have such a profound impact on our lives? Nobody, probably, except for the people who planned it. And yet here we are …
Or another example. When people accept censorship against the groups that they don’t relate to, they often don’t think that the censors are coming for them next — and yet more often than not, that is exactly what happens.
Or sometimes, a choice that we make at a very young age comes back to us years later, and whatever we tried to escape stares us straight in the face, and we have to deal with it anyway.
Which is to say, courage and trying to do the right thing are not only praise-worthy, they are also very practical, especially during challenging times.
There is most certainly no formula, and no universal prescription for a time like this but it’s important to see the scammers in high chairs for who they are (including when they talk about pandemic preparedness treaties “for our own good”), and to see through them without being afraid. When we stand together, with love in our hearts, we are strong.
About the Author
To find more of Tessa Lena’s work, be sure to check out her bio, Tessa Fights Robots.
Virologists pushed back on the possibility of tighter regulation of viruses tweaked in the lab to be more lethal at a public meeting Wednesday.
An enhanced pandemic potential pathogen is a virus or microbe that has gained increased transmissibility — capacity to spread from person to person and reverberate throughout a population — or virulence — capacity to cause serious disease.
Experiments that are reasonably anticipated to generate deadlier pathogens are supposed to receive heightened oversight from the Department of Health and Human Services under what is nicknamed the HHS “P3CO,” short for the pandemic potential pathogen committee.
Though established just a few years ago, critics say the committee’s work is hidden from public view, suffers from glaring loopholes and needs a reboot. Work that contributes to vaccine development or results from viral surveillance efforts in nature is exempted from this extra layer of review, for example.
Speculation by some in the U.S. intelligence community that SARS-CoV-2 may have seeped out of a lab at the pandemic’s epicenter may have prompted a public meeting to consider whether current policies are adequate. Reporting irregularities by a nonprofit partner of the lab involved in gain-of-function research on coronaviruses and funded by the National Institutes of Health called EcoHealth Alliance has also led many to conclude the P3CO needs to apply to more research projects and be more accountable to the public.
One million Americans have died of COVID-19. A review by the U.S. intelligence community last summer about whether the novel coronavirus spilled over from an animal or spilled out of a lab was inconclusive.
The Office of Science and Technology Policy and NIH cohosted the meeting Wednesday.
White House COVID-19 testing czar Tom Inglesby was harshly critical of the existing framework. His top recommendation: Scientists should be required to explain in detail the goals of undertaking such research in the first place, and why less perilous methods could not reach the same goal.
“There must be an extraordinary and public justification,” he said. “I do think there are experiments we shouldn’t do.”
But lobbying groups representing virologists and other life scientists pushed back.
“The systems of review should not be a solution looking for a problem,” said Felicia Goodrum, president of the American Society for Virology.
Goodrum said regulation risks “tying two hands behind our backs” when it comes to modeling pandemic risks.
Goodrum added that the inherently unpredictable nature of manipulating viruses means that it’s unwieldy to determine whether or not an experiment will make a virus more dangerous, so the regulations should be lax.
“We must be careful about dichotomizing research as simply either ‘risky’ or not because it is not possible to absolutely predict the biology of a virus with the committee,” she said.
But Gregory Koblentz, director of the biodefense graduate program at George Mason University, said that an EcoHealth Alliance grant that funded research that made coronaviruses more deadly by swapping their spike proteins is emblematic of lapses in oversight at NIH.
The research was not regulated as gain-of-function work, but NIH did add language to the grant requiring extra reporting if the viral engineering led to viruses that were 10 times more pathogenic. (The chimeric viruses proved to be much more pathogenic than even that threshold, but EcoHealth Alliance did not report it.) That language amounts to a “tacit admission” that NIH reasonably anticipated the work was gain of function, Koblentz said.
Stefano Bertuzzi, CEO of the American Society for Microbiology, conceded that labs should report more often to Congress and that scientists could do a better job allaying public concerns, but stated that the framework is otherwise sufficient.
Bertuzzi signaled he is concerned that Congress could step in.
Labs taking steps toward greater transparency “helps guard against well intended but sometimes overly prescriptive legislative approaches that could undermine the important work that needs to take place.”
Gigi Gronvall, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said that the “breathless hyping of risks” overshadows strong existing biosafety measures, such as U.S. efforts to train maximum containment labs abroad.
Asked which risks have been misunderstood, Gronvall said that “there is a lot of gray” and that the proper expertise is needed to interpret gain-of-function experiments, but did not go into further detail.
Indeed, some experts called for decreased transparency for controversial research. Colorado State University Biosafety Rebecca Moritz called for limiting the scope of public records requests. U.S. Right to Know has submitted a public information request for records about the university’s research on bat coronaviruses in collaboration with EcoHealth Alliance, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The documents raise questions about the contagion risks, for example, of shipping of bats and rats infected with dangerous pathogens.
Kanta Subbarao, director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, disputed the idea that research that contributes to vaccine development or results from surveillance should be included in the framework.
Many representatives of the life science and biodefense fields emphasized weighing any regulation against lost opportunities for science. But members of the public who participated in the meeting were much more skeptical of the value of certain gain-of-function work.
Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute, said that the public should not be surprised by controversial gain-of-function experiments for the first time in scientific papers, long after the research has been approved and completed.
Chan called for controversial experiments to be published on preprint servers and the genomes of novel viruses to be deposited into publicly available databases within a year of discovery.
She also called for greater transparency from private “virus hunting” organizations and middlemen between the NIH and labs, an apparent allusion to the EcoHealth Alliance and the Global Virome Project.
Kevin Esvelt, a biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said creating novel viruses in the lab, combined with the ease of synthesizing viruses from a genome sequence, poses a national security threat.
“More Americans have died of COVID than would perish if a Russian Topol SS-25 thermonuclear warhead were to be detonated in the center of Washington, DC,” said Esvelt. “Pandemic viruses can be more lethal than thermonuclear weapons. That makes them a proliferation concern.”
By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
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